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2006.05.12. NINJATUNE PRESENTS: COLDCUT, ONE SELF, BLOCKHEAD, DJ SIGNIFY @ Opera Hous
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Eye - May 11, 2006
Extended Play
WITH DENISE BENSON
COLDCUT
CLUBS-explay-0511With One Self, Blockhead, DJ SIGNIFY. Fri, May 12. The Opera House, 735 Queen E. $20 from Rotate This, Soundscapes and Ticketmaster.
"It did take quite a bit of time for the sap to rise, but it rose and we flowered."
Jonathan More is commenting on the first new album he and Coldcut production partner Matt Black have created since 1997's Let Us Play. Four years in the making, Sound Mirrors is more than worth the wait. Deep, diverse and polished to perfection, it's the most developed and musical full-length of the duo's almost 20-year career.
Sonically rich and socially aware, the album entertains and engages as guest vocalists including Roots Manuva, Amiri Baraka, Jon Spencer, Fog, Soweto Kinch and still-sharp avant-jazz songstress Annette Peacock drop words of wisdom. Sound Mirrors is pop, punk and, most of all, madly relevant dance music.
"The death knell of dance music has been rung for quite some time now, hasn't it?" muses More. "But I still think it's a great vehicle. Everybody wants to dance."
Famous for being as restless as they are creative, More and Black want to incite movement, both on the dancefloor and off. Though they've released but five albums of original material, they are constantly elbows-deep in a wide variety of projects, not the least of which is running Ninja Tune and its affiliated labels, and inventing devices encouraging people to create rather than simply consume, such as VJamm video mixing software.
"VJamm is about getting people to collaborate and perform," says More. "We did an installation with it for the Pompidou Centre in Paris where we put triggers on the floor and people could come in and work out how to play stuff. Very quickly, they realized that they had to work with the other people otherwise it just became a cacophony."
More and Black are inventive in many mediums, also crafting radio plays, films, guerrilla netcasts and more. Their 2001 track "Re:volution" -- coinciding with British elections -- grew from song to campaign and, eventually, multimedia arts project.
"Matt and I had this idea that MPs here were acting like pop stars so we felt we'd return the compliment, start our own party and act like MPs," More says. "We discovered that you could drive around London in a double-decker bus with a massive sound system on it, blaring out music for the periods of the election. You could also give out your latest promotional goods on the street, and people were interested. So it just seemed like a perfect opportunity.
"We performed bits of 'Re:volution' in America in 2000, and messed about with all of these Bush clips. In Chicago, we met [video artist] TV Sheriff and thought it would be interesting to open it all up. So we have Revusa.net, and there's loads of bits and bobs available for people to fuck about with."
The men who made Flip Wilson's line "Welcome to the church of what's happening now" famous on 1987's seminal "Beats & Pieces" single constantly invite the meeting of humans and new technologies. To that end, Coldcut have hit the road for their first extensive North American tour since 2000. Black handles video clips (also containing audio) with VJamm and a DVJ; More's got the beats, which also trigger other video and audio sources; new band member Raj Pannu provides both DVD and turntable scratching; and New Flesh For Old's Juice Aleem acts as MC.
Performing classics like "Paid In Full" alongside new material, Coldcut work to break down traditional barriers, asking audiences "to film their experience of the show, and send it to us" for possible inclusion in "some kind of collaborative documentary of the tour." Significantly, they also make a point of demonstrating who does what on stage.
"Like a band, we break the beats right down, and let everybody have a little tweak to make it really obvious, like 'Here's Matt, and this is what he does,' so people can really see it," explains More, before pausing for a chuckle. "Though inevitably, some people still think we're just pressing a button."
EMAIL DBENSON eye.net
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Palm Trees > Pine Trees , Sand > Snow
Last edited by dEsidEL on May-13-2006 at 01:51
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